Who ate the Baby?

I shared this story and lessons, motivated by my son at the recent Centonomy Open day and I believe it will also make sense to you as a follower of this column.

I have a friend who is in the final stages of pregnancy. A few weeks ago I went with my 4-year-old son to drop of her daughter who had spent the weekend with us.  Her daughter went and rubbed her mothers stomach and asked, “Is the baby OK?” As I was starting up the car to go home, my son was unusually quiet.  After a few minutes he asked me, “Mom, why did Aunty eat her baby?” Being four he couldn’t quite understand how a baby has gotten into a stomach and obviously we have not quite had the bees and the birds conversation with him. The concept of baby to him was my other son who was 11 months old at the time so he could not comprehend how something the size of his brother can get into a stomach unless it was eaten. What my four-year-old son could not see is the process to a baby. This same lack of understanding of process, or acknowledgement that going through the process will stretch us is also what keeps us in the comfort zone when it comes to many aspects of our lives including finances.  We behave as clueless as my son. We’ve all got to own our process and growth.  There will be no two people who have the same story to tell simply because we have different thumbprints. You were meant to do something differently and be consistently different.  You’ve just got to be willing to come out of the comfort zone embrace it, engage in your journey.

There’s an enemy to growth called “the same”.  What is this comfort zone we get ourselves in?  Same thinking, same friends, same ideas, same habits, same lifestyle, same blame game, same income, same way of resolving problems, same excuses etc. Staying the same whether we like it or not will always get you more of something and less of what you want to have. This is what “same” gets you. More of the same kind of debt, more conversations that have no impact, more buying of things to please other people and win their attention, more looming dread of retirement because you are just not ready to live without a full time job, more regular income i.e. income derived from regular habits, ideas and thinking, more lazy investments i.e. investments done without an end identifiable impact or result for your life, more wasting time which inevitably turns into wasting money, more avoiding looking at your finances and financial discussions, more children and generations that have inherited “the same habits, behaviors and thought patterns” (It is said that poverty is a mindset and is generational), more reasons to procrastinate and do it tomorrow. The list can go on and on. Like my son who could not see the process of a pregnancy, we want to stay the same, engage in no process, but miraculously gain money, wealth etc. We then wrongly assume people create wealth through one time deals and figure that at an unspecified point in time, with no action on our part, a deal will come and sort us out. We get comfortable in what is commonly referred to as the rat race.  This is a never-ending cycle where you keep working to buy more things, maintain a lifestyle, pay bills etc.  Since things become more expensive and there are always more things to buy and bills to pay, you work harder and/or take on debt.  Then things still get more expensive so you work harder.  It’s a never-ending cycle of hand to mouth. Because of that cycle, you are getting less of what you truly want – money, wealth, freedom, travel, experiences, time with family, knowledge, self confidence. You are getting more dependent on physical work to sustain you, pay bills, pay loans etc.

We have just got to shake ourselves up.  Don’t be deluded by the voice saying let’s wait, let’s see, next time, when I have more money or time, when I get a better job, when I finish campus, when I finally buy that phone. Let’s own up and accept that we have to go through a process and the earlier we do it the better. Don’t judge yourself and others because everyone’s process is different. Don’t try to be a square peg in a round hole as it only leads to frustration, stress, resentment, unfulfillment and very often comparison with others.  Get your hands dirty and discover what works for you.  Remove the fear of starting.  We are in different situations but we all have a next step to take, which is always a starting point in some form.  The starting point for some may be saving, getting out of debt, investing or improving on investments, starting a business, earning an income, managing household finances, a retirement plan, education plan, buying a house etc. The only way to conquer the fear of starting is to start. Just remember that the biggest thing you are conquering is not the circumstance but your mind. It’s usually always worse off in your mind.  Starting is difficult and uncomfortable at first but with practice gets easier and it starts being part of your life.  It’s like waking up earlier.  If you haven’t formed the habit yet, it tends to be very difficult.  But as you do it consistently it becomes normal and you even wake up without the alarm clock that you were so dependent on in the beginning. Same thing applies with working your financial process. At some point you will no longer see the discomfort as sacrifice or hard work. You will get through as long as you invest in the process by doing something differently. You will grow and you will conquer.  You will not be left asking, “Who ate the baby?”